The Cherry Orchard, Young Vic | reviews, news & interviews
The Cherry Orchard, Young Vic
The Cherry Orchard, Young Vic
Katie Mitchell delivers Chekhov's masterpiece with devastating power
Ghosts are walking at the Young Vic. Katie Mitchell’s stark, startling production of Chekhov’s final lament is not just an evocation of a lost era, but a summoning of the spirits haunting Vicki Mortimer’s chilling sepulchral mansion. This is a Cherry Orchard cast into shadow – literal and figurative – but pulsing with furious energy. The past will not go gentle into that good night; it calls out in a keening cry.
At just one hour 50, Simon Stephens’ taut adaptation combines elegy with economy. The stripped-back text suits Mitchell’s absolute clarity of purpose, although the excised repetition does deprive us of the agonising experience of witnessing the family sleepwalking to disaster over a languid summer’s cyclical denial. Salvation is always an illusion in a world this bitingly bleak.
Debt-laden aristo Ranevskaya (Kate Duchêne) is suffused with grief long before facing the loss of her ancestral estate and its precious cherry orchard, mourning her drowned son in visceral paroxysms. His enshrined nursery is a constant reminder of fatal consequences: his death occurred while Ranevskaya was embarking upon a profligate affair. Yet Chekhov deftly captures the gulf between awareness of harmful behaviour and ability to diverge from it – delivered with urgent resonance by Stephens.
Equally self-destructive are Ranevskaya’s brother Leonid (Angus Wright), futilely clinging to outmoded snobbery, and her daughters, diffident Varya (Natalie Klamar, pictured above) and fervid Anya (Catrin Stewart), pursuing ill-fated romance with socially mobile businessman Lopakhin (Dominic Rowan) and eternal student Trofimov (Paul Hilton) respectively. Housemaid Dunyasha (Sarah Ridgeway) is wooed by bumbling clerk Yepikhodov (Hugh Skinner), but is drawn inexorably to predatory, callous servant Yasha (Tom Mothersdale).
Although possessed of wry wit, this Cherry Orchard bracingly depicts the carnage of change, particularly in Yasha’s cruel treatment of doddery manservant Firs (Gawn Grainger), absurd personification of a dying way of life. Hilton (pictured below) demonstrates how belief in a revolutionary future can strip one of empathy for those in the present, while Rowan’s serf-turned-millionaire graduates from offering tone-deaf advice to enacting feudal vengeance. Nor are the sufferers of this reversal of fortune allowed to claim uncomplicated victim status; when backed into a corner, they use intimate knowledge to eviscerate.
Oft-cartoonish governess Charlotte (Sarah Malin) and mooching toff Simeonov-Pischik (Stephen Kennedy) benefit from this unsentimental, psychologically grounded approach, the former an androgynous, brusque cynic, the latter a candid study in dogged delusion. Most striking is Duchêne’s Ranevskaya, sometimes a grand dame indulgence, here sensual, erratic and rivetingly manipulative.
The murky naturalism is splintered with Mitchell’s striking stylistic elements, which variously underpin the achingly human tragedy and occasionally detract from it. Yet Chekhov's fatalistic desolation is conveyed with exceptional potency. “A whole new world will open up in front of us,” predicts Anya, and that reads not as rebirth, but descent into a terrifying chasm of the unknown.
MORE CHEKHOV ON THEARTSDESK
The Cherry Orchard, National Theatre (2011). Zoë Wanamaker (pictured below) shines in Howard Davies's murky production of Chekhov
The Cherry Orchard, Sovremennik, Noël Coward Theatre (2011). Russians soar in third, and final, offering of their first-ever London season
Uncle Vanya, The Print Room (2012). Iain Glen stars in a version of Chekhov at his most tenderly intimate
A Provincial Life, National Theatre Wales (2012). Moments of visual beauty punctuate a Chekhov adaptation that struggles to find its focus
Three Sisters, Young Vic (2012) Benedict Andrews' energetic update is stronger on ensemble work than individual performances
Uncle Vanya, Vakhtangov Theatre Company (2012). Anti-naturalistic Russian Chekhov buries humanity under burlesque and mannerism
Uncle Vanya, Vaudeville Theatre. Anna Friel, Laura Carmichael and Ken Stott shine bright in Lindsay Posner's production of Chekhov's drama
Longing, Hampstead Theatre (2013). William Boyd's dramatisation of two Chekhov stories with Iain Glen and Tamsin Greig is more pleasant than towering
Uncle Vanya/Three Sisters, Wyndham's Theatre (2014). Quiet truth in finely observed ensemble Chekhov from the Mossovet State Academic Theatre
Winter Sleep. Turkish master Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s Cannes Palme d'Or winner, based on Chekhov short stories, is huge in every sense
The Seagull, Regent's Park Open Air Theatre (2015). Strikingly staged Chekhov continues a strong season in the park
Uncle Vanya, Almeida Theatre (2016). Lengthy Chekhov revival/reappraisal is largely a knockout
Young Chekhov, National Theatre (2016). Jonathan Kent's three-play Chekhovathon builds to a shattering climax
Wild Honey, Hampstead Theatre (2016). Early Chekhov begins strongly then falls away
Add comment
Subscribe to theartsdesk.com
Thank you for continuing to read our work on theartsdesk.com. For unlimited access to every article in its entirety, including our archive of more than 15,000 pieces, we're asking for £5 per month or £40 per year. We feel it's a very good deal, and hope you do too.
To take a subscription now simply click here.
And if you're looking for that extra gift for a friend or family member, why not treat them to a theartsdesk.com gift subscription?
Comments
Yeah, spot on, it was